The Worst Boss
The office was extremely hot inside as I walked over to my boss Janice’s room. She had summoned me at my desk just a moment earlier. Janice insisted on making the office floor hot from time to time after she took a Bikram yoga class. Personally, I hated the heat. My curvy, full figure didn’t look as sexy in the black dress I was wearing when sweat was running down my face.
“Hi, Janice,” I said as I entered her office. “You called?”
“Why the fuck is it so hot in here, Kimberly?” she scathed. Janice was in her late-forties with bleached blonde hair and more plastic surgery edges than a sandwich baggie. She was also a total bitch. Usually, I would prefer to stay away from name-calling other women. However, in this case, there simply just was no better of a description for her.
“You set the temperature this morning,” I reminded her. “You pressed the thermostat until the button wouldn’t allow you to dial it up anymore. Then you said if anyone complained about the heat that they could come to you, and that they would be fired.”
“That’s not exactly the words I used, Kimberly,” Janice said looking at me with a twisted, angry expression. She was wrong; those were the exact words that she used at 9am this morning.
“I’m sorry,” I said. We had to apologize a lot of Janice. Mostly because she wouldn’t calm down until we did. “Would you like me to change the temperature?”
“You are my assistant, Kimberly!” Janice screamed. “Of course I want you to fucking change the damn temperature, Kimberly!”
Sometimes Janice would shout my name senselessly but her face wouldn’t move. This confused me as to how she actually felt. I always assumed it was the lethal amounts of Botox she had injected into her each month.
“I’ll be right back,” I said. Then I turned toward the outside of the hall and pressed the down arrow on the thermostat. The numbers didn’t change on the digital display. I pressed it again. Nothing happened.
“Great,” I said to myself. I knew that this meant another chunk out of my day would go missing as I attended to the temperature crisis. Not only that, but Janice would be down my throat until it was fixed. This was turning out to be another lovely day in the city’s best public relations office.
Tim Always Hits on Me
I quickly walked out of the building toward the maintenance room. Hopefully, I could talk with Tim who was in charge there, and that he could help me fix this issue as soon as possible.
“Hi Tim,” I said smiling at him in the doorway.
“Well, hello there!” Tim smiled back. “Why do I have the pleasure of having Eastgate Public Relations’ finest employee at my door?”
Tim was a nice guy. Though, he wasn’t really my type with his short stature and bad comb-over. Also, he always managed to find the most obvious ways to hit on me.
“I need you help,” I said.
“Oh!” he yelped. “I like the sound of that…”
“The thermostat in our building is out,” I said, ignoring his last comment. “It is stuck and blasting heat.”
“Did anyone, perchance, press the button and hold it down for more than fifteen seconds?”
“That would be Janice.”
“Of course it was,” Tim said, nodding his head. He knew how Janice acted. In fact, I’m sure that everyone in a ten-block radius of anywhere that Janice was, knew how she acted.
“I hate to ask you this, Tim,” I said. “But when do you think that you